Forum Discussion

Aspirant

Oct 23, 2020

ReadyNAS RN102 setup issues

Hi,

Really hoping somebody can help me work out whats going on with my RN102, which is loaded with 2x500GB disks. I was looking for a basic NAS to use with Plex as a music server, and this one seemed to fit the bill, so I picked one up off eBay. I have downloaded all the manuals from Netgear. I'm fairly computer literate but not used a NAS before. I'm using a windows 10 PC on the same network.

Turning it on for the first time and looking for it using ReadyCloud/RAIDar draws a blank - the ReadyNAS is not visible. Reading the manuals I realised it could be because the unit has changed networks, so I decide to try a factory reset via the boot menu, i.e:

1. Power off... and I hit my first problem.

Can't turn it off! Pressing the power button does nothing, neither does holiding it down. Neither does pressing it twice. Only thing I can do is unplug the power lead! Anyway I do that and then...

2. Hold the reset button on the back, power back on (button works when turning on?!)

3. Wait for all the lights to come on, then release the reset button

4. Use the backup button to select factory reset (light for disk 1 on only, as per the manual)

5. Press and release the reset button.

Following this the power button light flashes a few times and then stays on, the "act" light also stays on. No further activity for 20 minutes. According to the manual I should have had all lights flashing after 5-10 mins once the disk checks are complete and then it should start formating. No idea why its not working.

I tried OS re-install option from the boot menu as well, same result. I also tried it with the drives removed - same.

Did some searching of the forums and found some threads with people having similar issues, Netgear apprently advised to do a USB boot recovery. So I did that, tried it on 2 different USB sticks, with 2 different results but none of them the result I wanted. Both times I used the front USB slot as per the Netgear instructions, and the firmware I tried to apply was 6.10.3, which was the version offered on the Netgear website for this device:

USB stick 1: Power and backup lights flash together on a quick repeat - this seems to go on forever.

USB stick 2: Power and backup lights flash together as above, but it only lasts 30s or so and then I get solid power, act and backup.

The netgear instructions say the flash process is finished when the unit powers off, this didnt happen in either case - I waited 30 mins each time (I've read it should only take a few mins if the USB stick is being read). In the case of USB stick 2, once the solid lights came on, I was able to see the ReadyNAS in RAIDar but its status was "tech support mode" and there were no options available to interact with it. When I powered the unit off and on again RAIDar couldnt see it anymore.

Please help if anyone can... at the moment I'm looking at having an argument with someone on eBay about selling me a broken NAS. Am I missing something?

27 Replies

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StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Oct 23, 2020
Start by booting up the NAS diskless. Then see if RAIDar can discover the NAS and give you a no-disks status.

Also I'd test the disks in a Windows PC with vendor tools (Lifeguard for Western Digital, Seatools for Seagate). Do the full non-destructive test, and also the full write/erase test. If both pass, you can try putting one disk in the NAS and power it up. It should automatically do a factory install. If that works (meaning you can set up the NAS using RAIDar), then try powering down the NAS and moving that disk to the second slot. Make sure the NAS boots that way.

After that you can put that disk back in bay 1, power up the NAS, and hot-insert the second disk. It should detect it, and automatically start syncing (creating a RAID-1 array).

spock1189 wrote:

Turning it on for the first time and looking for it using ReadyCloud/RAIDar draws a blank - the ReadyNAS is not visible. Reading the manuals I realised it could be because the unit has changed networks

Actually not. RAIDar uses an ethernet discovery protocol, and it can find the NAS even if is configured for the wrong network. Internet security software can get in the way of that, and of course if the NAS NIC isn't working then RAIDar will also fail. So check the NIC leds also.
- spock1189
  Aspirant
  Oct 23, 2020
  Hi StephenB and thanks for your help. Following your response I have done the following:
  
  Checked ethernet cable - works good.
  Powered on with no disks inserted - invisible to RAIDar
  Powered on with disk in slot 1 only - invisible to RAIDar; solid power and act lights, nothing happening
  Powered on with other disk in slot 1 only - same result
  
  Some further info: I have got in touch with the person who sold me the unit and they have been helpful. They assured me it was in full working order prior to sale, and said they took the disks out and erased them using their PC and disk wipe software. They say this erased the master boot record and any partitions on the drives, and can't remember if they created new ones.
  
  So perhapsit could be the NAS not being able to read/write on the disks after that was done? Unfortunately I have no other spare disk drives apart from USB ones, so I think I need to do what you suggested StephenB, and plug the disks into my PC and see what the score is there. Will update you when I've done it.
  
  Thanks again.
  - Sandshark
    Sensei
    Oct 23, 2020
    If the NAS is invisible to RAIDar without drives, it's not the drives that are the main problem (though they may still be a secondary one). You either have no connection to the NAS over Ethernet, possibly because of bad hardware in between and possibly because something on your PC is blocking the traffic, or the NAS is broken. You can pursue checking if the drives are OK using a PC and also removing any partitions on them (the NAS can't deal with system reserved partitions created by Windows), but that's not going to fix the connectivity issue.
- spock1189
  Aspirant
  Nov 05, 2020
  Hello again StephenB and Sandshark . I finally got a SATA cable and hooked the drives that came with the NAS up to my PC via a spare port on my motherboard. I opened disk manager and saw that one of them had an existing volume on it, while the other disk was completely blank, showing as "unallocated" in disk manager.
  StephenB wrote:
  Also I'd test the disks in a Windows PC with vendor tools (Lifeguard for Western Digital, Seatools for Seagate). Do the full non-destructive test, and also the full write/erase test. If both pass, you can try putting one disk in the NAS and power it up. It should automatically do a factory install.
  
  I deleted the partition from the drive that had one (right click, delete volume). Note done this before but I was surprised because I thought this would take a while, but it was pretty much instant. It then showed as "unallocated" like the other one. I then downloaded SeaTools (they are seagate drives) and tested both drives. Both passed.
  
  After that I took one of the drives and put it in the NAS, slot 1, then powered it on. Nothing happened, just solid power/disk1 lights, nothing on RAIDar. While I was there I tried a factory reset on the NAS, with the same results as before (i.e. nothing happened).
  
  I wanted to see if this had written anything onto the disk, so I took it out and connected it back to my PC. There was no new volume, so clearly nothing had been formatted.
  
  I repeated the process with the second disk, this time I went straight to factory reset, without turning the NAS on normally first. Results were identical.